A Twist in Time

by Susan Squires

  “Yes.” Points to her for seeing that. To most people it just looked like gibberish.

  “What language is it in?”

  “Archaic Italian, some Latin.”

  The girl looked dubious.

  “Take a class. It will be worth your time. Or have it translated. There’s a guy over at Berkeley, Dr. Dent. He could do the job.”

  Galen swept up Pony in one arm. Lucy rose, feeling better than she had all week. She couldn’t keep from smiling. “I’m feeling okay now. We can go.” Galen looked disturbed. He glanced significantly at the Danger door. “I’ve done what I came to do,” she assured him. Turning to the girl, Lucy said, “What’s your name? I’d like to pick up some of your books.”

  The little mouse blushed charmingly. “Diana Dearborn.”

  “That’s a great name for a romance writer.”

  “I didn’t change it. That’s what my mother named me,” she said defensively.

  “Lucky you.” Lucy pressed Diana’s hands. “Have a wonderful time. I did. It will change your life. Maybe it will transform you. And when you’re ready . . .” She leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “Look behind the door.”

  Diana Dearborn looked shocked, puzzled. Yeah. She would. But not forever. She’d figure it out.

  Galen downed the rest of the water and gave the cup to Pony. He took Lucy’s arm and guided her protectively out into the night. “What about the machine?” he whispered into her ear.

  “It’s there. I felt it. It’s fine. And we’re done with it. The book needed to go to someone else. I think it needed to go to Diana Dearborn.”

  “You look as though a weight has been lifted.”

  “An obsession, more likely. One of them. I still have obsessions.” She rubbed his arm, feeling the hard muscle through his sweater.

  He looked down at her, a smolder rising in his ice blue eyes. “Pony really likes that nice lady who babysat the other night, don’t you, sweet one?”

  “Yesss,” Pony said carefully. She was newly aware that she had a sibilant s. “S-she is very nice. She likes Vandal.”

  “Vandal likes her,” Galen said, talking to Pony but still looking at Lucy. “Even though he’s very protective of you.”

  “And they’re doing Wagner at the opera . . . ,” Lucy added. Galen was wild for Wagner. All that Germanic Sturm und Drang must be pretty close to his own experience.

  He gave her a warning look. “You know that Wagner always puts me in the mood for . . .”

  She sighed, trying not to grin. “Something to do with pillaging? I guess I can handle it.”

  “Ja,” he said, his accent coming up a little, just as it always seemed to do in the bedroom. “You handle it, Lucy.” He bent to kiss her ear. “And I will handle you. Equal.”

  “I warn you, you’re likely to feel equally pillaged.”

  “Ahhh, I’ll try to bear up,” he said sadly. “My proud Viking spirit has been broken.”

  “Sometimes I wish,” Lucy laughed. But she didn’t. She liked him difficult and protective and even demanding. He was a match for her in so many ways.

  Galen opened the door for Lucy and bundled Pony into the car seat of the black Escape Hybrid. Vandal lavished her with kisses. Lucy slid into the passenger seat. The car smelled like new leather and wet dog. It had been raining earlier.

  “Vandal,” Pony cried, laughing as the big black dog washed her ear. “What an yful hund.” What would Pony’s kindergarten teacher think of her mixture of Old and modern English?

  Galen came around to the driver’s seat. He loved to drive. In fact, he loved to drive fast, but he didn’t with Pony in the car.

  “Why do you like opera so much?” Lucy asked when he had settled behind the wheel.

  “Because it seems magic, of course. The singing, the music of so many instruments joining together into another thing altogether, the way they make you think the stage is so many different places . . .” He pulled out of the parking lot under the arch of the Golden Gate.

  Galen had brought a simple joy and wonder to so many aspects of the world she’d always taken for granted. What had life been like before Galen? Maybe she’d gotten the magic to transform her life in more ways than one. Not easy, any of it. But worth it, every day.

  “Then Wagner it is. Let’s go and find a little magic tonight.”

  Read on for an excerpt from the next book

  by Susan Squires

  THE MISTS OF TIME

  Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  The machine that lowered the casket into the ground made a grinding noise. They really ought to oil the mechanism. Fog rolled in as the light faded. She pulled her black wool cape tighter around her shoulders. Spring in San Francisco still seemed far away in March. A guy waited in a small tractor-thing to scoop dirt back into the grave. Indoor-outdoor carpet was draped over the excavated pile, as if that would camouflage the finality of dirt.

  The other mourners had gone after they said all the prescribed words about the “unfortunate event” being a blessed release since her father had Alzheimer’s, and how he was going to God’s bosom—that sort of thing. She couldn’t quite muster the will to take her eyes from the coffin. If you’d watched as many horror movies as she had, you couldn’t help but wonder what he’d look like after a year or five or ten or fifty in there. Maybe she should have opted for cremation. But her father had wanted to be buried beside his wife of thirty years. They were the reason she could write romances. She knew at least one couple who’d found love.

  The thunk as the coffin hit the bottom of the grave was like a slap. She heaved in a breath and jerked her eyes up. Her gaze was drawn to the grove of redwoods up the hill from the gravesite. The shadows between their trunks were filling up with mist.

  She knew he was there before he stepped out from the trees. Dark hair, fair skin, bulky shoulders. She might have been mistaken when she’d seen him across the lake at the Palace of Fine Arts. He could just have been someone who looked a little like the guy who pushed past her in the corner liquor store near her apartment.

  But this time, there was no doubt. It was the same guy all right. If she got closer, she’d see the blue-green eyes (or maybe gray?) and classic features she’d glimpsed in the liquor store. Was he stalking her? You can’t stalk somebody if you look like the cover model for a romance novel, she wanted to shout. People notice a guy like you. Women, anyway. And while she might not be someone guys ever noticed, she was still a woman. In that liquor store, as his whatever-colored eyes had met hers, she’d experienced some thrill of . . . well, of the sort she only wrote about. Spooky, really. You couldn’t be attracted to a man you didn’t even know. Not like that. But it meant you’d recognize him when you saw him again.

  A thrill of fear found its way into her stomach. She couldn’t look away from the stalker now, as though staring at him could solve the mystery of why any man would be stalking someone like her. Romance writers sometimes acquired stalkers. The guys who wrote all those fan letters from prison sometimes got out. But she wasn’t a big name or anything, though she’d had a score of books published. She wasn’t rich, and she wasn’t beautiful. He just stood there, maybe fifty yards away, letting her look. Did he want her to know he was stalking her, just to wring maximum fear out of the situation?

  He looked . . . familiar, somehow. More than just the two or three times she’d glimpsed him. He couldn’t be . . . and yet . . .

  “Miss Dearborn?”

  Diana gasped and jumped.

  “Oh, I am so sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Diana heaved breaths while she patted her palm against her breast as though that would start her heart. How had the woman surprised her? She always heard what people would say just before they said it. That was her gift, or her curse. The world was like an echo chamber for her, people forever repeating what she had just heard them saying. Like singing a constant “round robin” song. She must have been distracted by her stalker. “Don’t mind me,” s
he said breathlessly. The woman was a candidate for “portly short” clothing. Her hair had been dyed what hairdressers called “menopause red.” She glanced up to the redwood grove, but her stalker had disappeared. Was she imagining him?

  Now the familiar echo of what the woman would say reverberated in Diana’s mind. “I don’t mean to interrupt your hour of mourning.” People in the funeral business used those formal phrases to mask the fact that they no longer gave death any but the most cursory attention. “Perhaps you’d like to continue your meditation in the comfort of our reception lounge while our associates put the final touches on your father’s resting place?”

  Diana tore her eyes from the redwoods, now enveloped in mist. “No, thank you. I’d better go.” She put her head down and squished away over the damp grass inset with flat headstones. Thank goodness I wore flat shoes.

  Diana turned before the woman could call after her. “You don’t have to send the flowers to my apartment.” The woman looked shocked. Diana usually didn’t reveal herself that way, but she couldn’t stand any more formal sympathy. The tractor engine ground to life. “You just . . . do whatever you do with them usually.” A big dumpster crouched in back of the reception building.

  She stumbled down the gentle slope. Her car looked lonely in the visitors’ parking lot because the employees parked around back by the dumpster.

  Fitting. She’d always felt . . . separate. Not only because she lived in an echo chamber but because she had had no childhood. At least until she was thirteen. That was about how old she was when they found her wandering around the suburbs of Chicago, dressed strangely and speaking in tongues, with a big gash in her scalp and a king-sized knot, unable to remember anything about where she came from or where she belonged. No one came forward to claim her. After some disastrous foster care, she’d been adopted by a wonderful older couple. Her adoptive mother died in a car accident a couple of years after the family moved to San Francisco. Now her father was gone, too.

  She had no one.

  She sloshed across the gravel parking lot to the old Honda Accord that had been her father’s. She slid into the driver’s seat and closed her eyes, hugging the shoulder bag that held her treasured antique book. Maybe the book was all she had now.

  She couldn’t even write anymore. She had only twenty-five pages done on the novel that was due next month. She dreaded telling Jen, her editor. The whole thing made her want to rip her hair out. Much as she loved the setting of Camelot and her hero, Gawain, the romance just wouldn’t come to life. She’d give back the advance and call it a day, but the money had gone to pay the deductible on Dad’s insurance this year. Happy endings seemed to be in short supply right now, even fictional ones.

  She put her bag on the passenger’s seat beside her. The priceless book inside had been taking up more and more of her thoughts. That was just because she needed an escape. It was hard to visit her father every day and wonder whether he’d recognize her or not. But the obsession had really ramped up since her father’s death. She knew why. She just didn’t want to admit it. At least she wasn’t imagining the book. It was real. And it was by Leonardo da Vinci.

  Yeah. That da Vinci. She’d have enough to set her up for life if she sold it, let alone enough to give back her advance, but the horror at even the thought of selling the book made the word “obsession” seem inadequate.

  Whoa. Probably imagined stalker, obsession over a precious book, writer’s block, all on top of her little natural proclivities . . . Maybe she needed a therapist. As if she could afford one.

  She took two deep breaths and started the car. Okay. It wasn’t crazy to feel bereft on the day your father was buried. Adopted father, but still. . . .

  She headed west on Waller, to hit Delores south. Time to go home to her little apartment just east of the Mission District. Unable to help herself, she reached over to touch the book. The way it had come into her life was a little surreal . . .

  Diana had been coming out of the office at the Exploratorium, the children’s science museum where she supervised docents to make ends meet when she practically ran into the family. The woman had very green eyes and very red hair and that translucent, perfect skin that goes with them. Her baby bump was just beginning to show. The little girl was a paler version of her mother. The father was a looker. Anything in range with a female hormone was casting surreptitious looks at him. He ought to be standing at the prow of a Viking ship, preferably stripped to the waist.

  “Closing time,” Diana announced. The Viking’s next words echoed in her mind.

  “Okay.” He gathered the little girl into one big arm. “We’ll just stop at the restrooms before I take my two girls home.” He took his wife’s elbow protectively.

  The woman took one look at Diana, gasped, and slumped against her husband.

  “Lucy, are you all right?” The Viking hauled her in against his free hip with one massive arm. “You need to sit down.” He looked around, frowning.

  “Over here, sir.” Diana guided them to a bench beside the door marked with a large sign that said “Danger. Keep out.” The little girl was worried.

  “What’s wrong with Mommy?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Nothing, honey,” the woman called Lucy managed as she eased down on the bench. “Mommy didn’t eat enough at lunchtime.” She laid her large shoulder bag down beside her.

  The Viking’s gaze swept the area. “Can you look after Pony?” he asked Diana, setting the little girl on her feet. “I’ll buy a mug at the gift shop and bring some water.”

  Diana grabbed Pony’s hand, and the Viking strode away. Pony. Odd name, but cute.

  The woman grabbed her shoulder bag again and clutched it to her chest, her green gaze fixed on Diana’s face. “Have . . . have you been a docent long?” she asked.

  Diana glanced up from the little girl to the woman her husband called Lucy and . . . and a connection sparked between them. Did Diana know her? “I’m actually a supervisor. It pays the bills while I wait for my ship to come in.” She never told anyone about her father’s illness.

  “And what exactly would your ship look like?”

  Diana mustered a smile “Well . . . I write books.” She looked up to see the woman’s expression of sympathy. Everybody and their brother was a failed writer these days. “Oh, I’m published,” she assured the woman. “But it doesn’t come with health insurance or a 401K. City of San Francisco provides those.” That was her standard line. People always thought you were rich if you were published. Only a few, like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling and Nora Roberts made millions at writing. Almost everybody else just survived.

  “What do you write?”

  Diana sighed. Now she’d see the flash of derision or the uneasy shifting of the eyes. “Romances. They aren’t the usual romances.” Did she sound defensive? “They’re very carefully researched. They’re well-reviewed, too.”

  “Historical?”

  She nodded. “Premedieval. The origin of courtly love.” Not even a hint of eye-rolling. Emboldened, Diana continued. “That was the time to live.” She couldn’t help the longing that drenched her voice. “Right now I’m researching Camelot. I think that was the start of everything.”

  Diana watched as Lucy gave a sharp intake of breath and examined Diana’s face as though she’d just had a revelation. The Viking strode toward them with his cup of water, a worried frown creasing his brow. The woman smiled, first at him, and then at Diana. A look Diana could only describe as sureness suffused her expression. “I have a gift for you.” She hauled a very large leather-bound book from her bag and handed it to Diana.

  “This . . . this is old. I . . . I couldn’t take this.” The tooled leather binding was beautiful.

  “Of course you can. I’m giving it to you just as it was given to me.” The woman glanced to her husband and stilled what Diana was sure was an incipient protest with a look.

  Diana opened the book gingerly, scanning the pages. “It’s written backwards.”

>   “Yes. It’s in archaic Italian and Latin.”

  Diana frowned. “I have some Latin but I’m afraid I don’t read Italian.”

  “A professor over at Berkeley, Dr. Dent, translated it. He’ll confirm its authenticity.”

  Authentic what? The woman rose, looking strangely serene. “I’m feeling fine. We can go.” Diana caught her husband’s pointed look at the “Danger” door. “I’ve done what I came to do,” his wife assured him. To Diana she said, “What’s your name? I’d like to read your books.”

  Diana blushed. “Diana Dearborn.”

  “That’s a great name for a romance writer.”

  They always thought it was a pseudonym, “That’s what my mother named me.” In a way it was a pseudonym, since it certainly wasn’t the name she’d been born with.

  “Lucky you.” The woman pressed her hands. “Use the book. It will change your life. And when you’re ready . . .” She leaned forward to whisper in Diana’s ear. “Look behind the door.”

  Diana drew back in shock, then glanced to the door marked “Danger.”

  “Yes. That one.” The woman smiled. And then she and her family strolled out into the San Francisco fog. The whole scene looked like the fade-out happy ending to a movie.

  Diana jerked her head around as a car honked at her and sped by on her left. She felt a little shaky. Maybe she’d just pull over. Dolores Park loomed to her right. It was easy to find a parking place at this time of night. The park was cool and black. She’d just get her breath.

  But the feeling of anxiety in her chest was ramping up into panic.

  The red-haired woman called Lucy thought there was something behind the door marked danger that would change Diana’s life, apparently for the better. Once she’d read Dr. Dent’s translation, Diana knew what Lucy thought was behind that door.

  Ultimate craziness. The very fact that Diana could half-believe it was a sign that she was going a little round the bend. The book was a hoax, even if it was a hoax by Leonardo da Vinci. The manuscript recorded Leonardo’s effort to build a time machine. It said he succeeded.